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Stemlets

In some notational conventions beams are allowed to extend over rests. Depending on preference, these beams may drop ‘stemlets’ to help the eye appreciate the rhythm better, and in some modern music the rest itself is omitted and only the stemlet remains.

This snippet shows a progression from traditional notation, to beams over the rest, to stemlets over the rest, to stemlets alone. Stemlets are generated by overriding the stemlet-length property of Stem, and rests are hidden by using \hide.

Some \markup elements are included in the source to highlight the different notations.

\paper {
  ragged-right = ##f
}

{
  c'16^\markup { traditional } d' r f'
  g'16[^\markup \column { "beams" "over rests" } f' r d']

  % N.B. use Score.Stem to set for the whole score.
  \override Staff.Stem.stemlet-length = #0.75

  c'16[^\markup \column { "stemlets" "over rests" } d' r f']
  g'16[^\markup \column { "stemlets" "and no rests" } f'
  \once \hide Rest
  r16 d']
}